Free Romancing the Pirate 01.5 - Beneath The Water's Edge by Jennifer Bray-Weber

tide.”
    He chuckled. “I bow my head to the executioner who pulls the lever and leaves me kicking the wind.”
    “You trifle with big talk.”
    Despair, swilled with anger, clouded his mind. “Do not make a mistake, lass. I am deserving of the devil’s scourge. From the very moment I spilled innocent blood, my sins thereafter were of little consequence. No holy cleansing, no absolution would ever rectify what had been done.”
    “Innocent?”
    “A boy, dead, by my hand.” He glared at her, wanting to put fear into her. She should not forget he was a pirate in every sense of the word. Her life was at his discretion.
    “You killed a boy?” Her eyes grew the size of doubloons. “How?”
    “You’re an intrusive chit.”
    “Perhaps. But if you wish to frighten me, to which you are trying so hard to do, then you should tell me what darkness led you to become a cruel, vicious man, which incidentally, you are not.”
    “You make a grave mistake to misjudge me.”
    “Then prove to me I am wrong. Tell me what happened.”
    He would rather talk more about her, hear more stories of the little girl who once sneaked into her papa’s office and scribbled pictures of flowers and kittens in all his record books, of how she preferred riding her mare in the rain to prattling with genteel ladies over tea, and of the dreams she had not so long ago of running a business of her own.
    Blackthorn crossed his arms over his chest. Elyssa wasn’t going to let the conversation die. Much like the ghosts of his past still haunting him. If she wanted to know what kind of monster he was, then he would tell her. Mayhap her disgust and fear in him would make it all the more easier to rid himself of her in New Providence.
    “He was my charge while docked in Antigua. The sixteen year-old son of Admiral Drummond of the Royal Navy. The upstart let no one forget it, always using threats of castigation or removal if he didn’t get his way.” No one had wanted to challenge the lad, or go up against his equally arrogant father. Blackthorn didn’t have a problem with putting the boy in his place, and he wasn’t scared of Admiral Drummond, either. He supposed that was one reason why Joseph had been assigned to him. The other reason was what got him killed.
    “He demanded to be taught swordplay, specifically without the pleasantries of prescribed behavior. But the little shit had no discipline.” Elyssa was unaffected by his vulgar tongue. Instead, she listened intently, her hands cupped tightly around her mug. Criminy, the lass had been around crude jack tars too long.
    Blackthorn remembered well Joseph’s barbing slurs on his bastardized breeding, contemptuous eye rolling and sneers. Many occasions had Blackthorn tempering his urge to backhand the sprat.
    The day the boy met his death had been no different.
    He had taken Joseph up to a grassy bluff overlooking the craggy shoreline of English Harbour for lessons. Wind swept up the cliff in blustery bursts. The air was heavy and smelled of a recent rain. Blackthorn had been out of sorts, hearing a rumor his betrothed was seen without an escort in a garden with another man. He’d been in no mood for Joseph’s backbiting.
    “He adopted a terrible technique, overextending himself in thrusts. Forevermore I had to correct him, until I began kicking his legs from under him each time he left his flank exposed. The boy didn’t appreciate kissing the ground time and again. He took to name-calling and threatening me. I ordered him to hold his clack, to stand down.” Joseph had been wild-eyed, his mouth twitched with hate. Blackthorn should have known he was foolish enough to not obey.
    “He attacked. I disarmed him easily enough, and with the tip of my blade tucked neatly under his chin, I informed him I would no longer be his teacher. He promised to have me imprisoned for dereliction.” One of the greatest moments of Blackthorn’s miserable life was the dumbfounded look on Joseph’s pompous mug